{"id":48063,"date":"2025-06-11T08:00:17","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T12:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=48063"},"modified":"2025-06-07T20:51:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T00:51:13","slug":"every-bugs-bunny-ever-hare-brush-1955","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/11\/every-bugs-bunny-ever-hare-brush-1955\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Bugs Bunny Ever: Hare Brush (1955)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hare Brush<\/strong> (1955)
\nDirected by Friz Freleng
\nStory by Warren Foster
\nAnimation by Ted Bonnicksen, Art Davis, Gerry Chiniquy
\nMusic by Milt Franklyn<\/p>\n

Not unlike last week\u2019s entry \u201cSahara Hare,\u201d \u201cHare Brush\u201d gets off to a great start with original humor but strangely falls flat midway through with dull and tired gags.
\n<\/p>\n

In this short, Elmer Fudd is reinvented as Elmer J. Fudd, the chief executive of a corporation bearing his name. But Elmer\u2019s behavior is worrying his board of directors \u2013 he believes that he is a rabbit. Indeed, his strangely colorless eyes suggests something is wrong with this mental health. The directors resolve to commit him to Fruitcake Sanitarium \u2013 which, according to its entry sign, is \u201cfull of nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elmer, wearing a rabbit costume, is confined to a room with metal bars on the window. Outside of the window, Bugs Bunny walks by nonchalantly. Elmer gets his attention and convinces him to take the bars off the window in exchange for free carrots. Bugs complies and Elmer hops out the window and scampers away. Bugs assumes he is going out for carrots and decides to \u201ckeep his bed warm\u201d until he returns.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the German-accented psychiatrist Dr. Oro Myicin is assigned to treat Elmer\u2019s “rabbitschenia.” He arrives in the room and mistakes Bugs for Elmer. When Bugs resists the doctor\u2019s attempt to cure him of believing he is a rabbit, the doctor gives Bugs a drug that paralyzes his resistance. Bugs is forced to repeat \u201cI am Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire \u2013 I own a mansion and a yacht\u201d over and over until the doctor pronounces him cured.<\/p>\n

Up until this point, \u201cHare Brush\u201d is strikingly original with its funny-nasty jabs at psychiatry and its positioning of Elmer in a boldly new characterization. Unfortunately, the cartoon shifts gears when Bugs leaves the sanitarium believing he is Elmer (complete with Elmer\u2019s speech impediment) and he decides to go rabbit hunting. From there, the film devolves into the same plot as the 1943 short \u201cThe Hare-Brained Hypnotist,\u201d with Bugs and Elmer changing roles as predator and prey. The film also reaches back to \u201cHare Remover\u201d (1946) to bring in a bear as a disruptive force in the romp. Unfortunately, the gags in this part of the film are sluggishly paced and utterly predictable \u2013 it feels like a completely different film was grafted on the freshly original first half. <\/p>\n

And the twist ending that explains why Elmer suddenly developed “rabbitschenia” \u2013 a federal agent unexpectedly arrives to arrest Bugs-as-Elmer for tax evasion \u2013 isn\u2019t that funny, although it offers a rare case of Elmer triumphing over Bugs at the cartoon\u2019s close.<\/p>\n

Oh, listen carefully to Elmer in the first scene and there is a mistake in Mel Blanc’s line readings \u2013 this might be only time that Elmer says “rabbit” instead of “wabbit.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hare Brush (1955) Directed by Friz Freleng Story by Warren Foster Animation by Ted Bonnicksen, Art Davis, Gerry Chiniquy Music by Milt Franklyn Not unlike last week\u2019s entry \u201cSahara Hare,\u201d \u201cHare Brush\u201d gets off to a great start with original humor but strangely falls flat midway through with dull and tired gags.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":48064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3068],"tags":[99,167,2078,2158,3731],"class_list":["post-48063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bugs-bunny-ever","tag-animation","tag-bugs-bunny","tag-cartoon","tag-elmer-fudd","tag-mental-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48063"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48068,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48063\/revisions\/48068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}